The Chorus

Introduction

Christophe Barratier`s hugely successful remake of `La Cage aux rossingols` (1945),
set in post-war France and charts the attempts of a new school supervisor to change the lives of `problem` boys who are mainly orphans of the war.

Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot) has been appointed supervisor to the Fond de l`Etang boarding school (meaning `Rock Bottom - according to the screenplay). He finds the place run almost like a French prison colony (á la `Papillon`), with the school motto of `Action - Réaction` used to invoke a punishment regime ranging from corporal punishment to being put into solitary confinement for weeks.

Mathieu`s concerns are raised even further when he has to choose a random boy to be put into solitary following an incident which causes serious injury to the caretaker.

After this he decides a new approach needs to be taken and begins to use his skills as a music teacher and composer and gradually changes the lives of the boys, two in particular, and the life of the school.

Video

The picture quality of the film is excellent and the colours give you the feeling that you`re actually watching a much older film. The sets used give a great impression of a stark and uninviting place.

Audio

The sound is similarly fine, and the film is accompanied by an effective (though sometimes a little obtrusive) score from Bruno Coulais. The singing from the boys choir (obviously trained singers, but very good at pretending to be complete novices at the start) is very clear and well-balanced

Features

Extras include the usual scene selection, theatrical trailer, and one of the best `making of` films I`ve seen on a DVD (is the French translation of `The making of` really `Le making of`?). It wipes the floor with the usual back-slapping congratulatory fillers we too often see. Rather, it has a very natural fly-on-the-wall style to it, allowing everyone to have a say in how they think the filming is going. The comments by the boys are hilarious and moving in equal measure, and is overall a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable glimpse into almost every aspect of the film-making process.

Conclusion

This is a film which you would have expected to have been made many years ago, with a very simple storyline and a feel-good factor that goes off the scale, yet just manages to stay within the boundary of watchability and serious sentimentality (although there is a fair amount of this).

The acting from the young cast (many had never been in a film before) is exemplary and you feel genuinely moved by what they have gone through in their lives, although this is never explained in great detail. Ideally, I would have preferred a greater sense of menace in the story, even though this is attempted by introducing us to Mondain, a boy who is constantly being moved from school to school and appears to be going for the French exclusion record.

As I have mentioned, the singing from the choir is very good indeed, but the four months it takes for Mathieu to convert them into a bunch of apparently tone-deaf droners into a competition-ready 4 part chorus is a bit hard to believe, but of course, a little suspension of disbelief is the norm if you want to be entertained.

If I have any moans at all about this DVD, they are thoroughly trivial ones. The subtitles seem to revert from grating Americanisms (spelling as well - can`t we have non-American spelling for R2 DVDs?) to slang which is very familiar to us in Britain. Additionally, the DVD subtitler for the documentary seems to have not checked the spellings of the character names, which is a little slack. There is also a short, but increasingly annoying (the more you play the disc) introduction to the menu screen which we cannot skip through and seems a little pointless.

Moans over. This is an old-fashioned film, but none the worse for it. The simplicity of the plot and the fact that we care about the characters almost as soon as we are introduced to them mean that this is something which will stick with you for quite some time. After watching the documentary, I put the film on again. Recommended for all you hard-hearted souls out there!